Chaar Diwaari’s track Aashiqana, a collaboration with Gini and Indian Ocean, behaves like a retold story

When Garv Taneja AKA (Chaar Diwaari), Nandini Nayal (Gini), and the rock band Indian Ocean came together to work on Aashiqana, the closing track of the Parvana EP, the collaboration did not begin with a studio session or a formal brief, but with something closer to an open-ended gathering — a few ideas, a half-formed song, and a shared sense that whatever this was, it would need to hold more than one way of thinking about music.

Chaar Diwaari, the architect of the project, brought in a sensibility shaped by hip-hop structures and digital production. Gini arrived with a voice that tends to lean inward towards intimacy and restraint. Indian Ocean, a band whose work stretches back decades, carried with it a practice rooted in live instrumentation, collective playing, and songs that expand rather than resolve.

Here's how Chaar Diwaari, Gini and Indian Ocean collaborate on Aashiqana

Aashiqana becomes the space where those approaches meet, not by flattening their differences but by arranging them, like objects on a long table that start to make sense only when you step back.

The song itself began elsewhere, in a smaller setting. “I wrote that song at Gini’s house, on her piano,” Garv says. “I originally wrote it like a 3/4 waltz piece. And I felt that it was a dud.” That misalignment pushed the song outward. “I wanted Parvana’s death to be celebrated in a way,” he says. “It was almost like a post-death experience. The folklore singers are narrating the story after his death here."

That framing made the idea of collaboration less decorative and more structural. The song required multiple voices because it was no longer owned by one.

Indian Ocean’s entry was a bit informal at the start. “Charlie first wrote to us on Instagram and said he was a fan,” says guitarist Himanshu “Hil” Rao, referring to Garv by his nickname. What emerged was a shift in the working method. “We are used to sitting in a room and thrashing out ideas together. Garv wanted to record right away. It didn’t matter if the ideas were bad, because he would chop it, shape it, and use it.”

That process was complicated further by the fact that the song itself was being rebuilt. “The first draft felt like three different worlds trying to exist inside one song,” Garv says. Instead of compromise, he chose demolition. “I decided to scrap that version completely. I didn’t want it to sound like three separate songs stitched together. I wanted it to feel like one space where everyone exists naturally.”

Gini encountered that room at a later stage. As the last to record vocals, she entered a structure that had already taken shape. “It felt like fitting in that last puzzle piece.”

“This is the only moment in the EP where shamaa (flame) finally speaks,” Garv says. “My verse comes from Parvana’s (moth) perspective, almost like his soul speaking after death. Then Gini’s verse comes from Shamaa’s perspective.” The song becomes a sequence of vantage points, each one altering the last.

For Gini, that meant adjusting both emotionally and technically. “The rhythm is something that I’ve never sung before. This became almost like a garba song. I had to adopt a bolder tone. It’s almost like a lullaby, asking him to lay down his head and rest. Things did not go as Parvana wanted them to go, but they happened nonetheless.”

Indian Ocean’s role sits slightly apar. “They sing in a way that represents the folklore singers who told the story,” Chaar Diwaari says.

The collaboration was not conceived as a deliberate merging of audiences or styles. “It was not my intention to bridge any kind of generational gap. My only intention was to make a project that I truly believed in.” Gini reflects a similar shift. “This is actually the first time wherein I let the main artiste of the song take the wheels. All I did was try to do justice to the part that he had been working on for so long.”

What holds Aashiqana together is not uniformity, but arrangement. The song does not resolve into a single voice. It continues as a composite, shaped by the contributions of each artiste, each one leaving a different kind of imprint.

“It becomes something larger,” Garv says. “Something that lives on through people who keep telling it.”

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